The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party

Michael F. Holt is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of History and chair of the history department at the University of Virginia. In The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, Professor Holt presents the first full-scale history of the American Whig Party, including a panoramic view of nineteenth-century American politics and portraits of colorful figures from Jackson and Calhoun to Webster and Clay. Professor Holt shows how the Whig Party struggled in vain to achieve a compromise between North and South, and thus avert secession and civil war.